


Telltale

by LittleSammy



Category: NCIS
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 06:04:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSammy/pseuds/LittleSammy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby, being perceptive. Ziva, being telling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telltale

**Author's Note:**

> Post-episode tag to 10x12 "Shiva", so spoilers for that episode. Otherwise, it's just happy feelgoody fluff.

"Ziva! You're back!"

The words, loud, happy, were accompanied by a tacklehug that knocked the breath out of the Israeli for a moment, and she blinked while she tried to stay upright through the almost violent welcome. 

"Yes, Abby." She smiled and returned the embrace, much more welcome this time than when she had last been here. Back then, the pain had been too fresh, and she'd had a hard time dealing with people. And she'd almost, almost given in to her old ways of crawling deep into her solitary shell while keeping everyone else firmly locked out of her heart. But a few ugly memories had been put to rest since then, and Ziva had changed, and things... other things had certainly changed, too. Maybe that was why she was attentive enough to feel the minute tremble in her friend's muscles, almost like a sob Abby tried to hold back. With a frown, Ziva drew back and scrutinized Abby's face. "Wait, you think I would not? Abby!"

"I'm never sure when you go to Israel," Abby admitted with a slightly awkward shrug. Her eyes were suddenly shifty, and she looked uncomfortable, as if she were chiding herself for the childish fear of loss, but still couldn't put it aside completely. "One of these days you might not come back, and-- oh my god, you had sex!"

"What?" Ziva's eyes widened in shock and she let go of her friend as if she'd been burned. "No!"

But Abby had sniffed blood now, so to speak. Her hands shot out, clamped down hard on Ziva's shoulders and kept her from turning away. "Ziva David, don't you lie to me about the important things! You're practically glowing, so what happened?"

Ziva had never been someone to blush easily. She'd done and seen too many things in her old life, and these things had long ago killed the habit of succumbing to embarrassment as if she were a teenager. And yet, this time she suddenly felt a telltale heat rise in her cheeks, and the more she tried to ignore it, the more persistent it became. And that was what Abby latched on to, of course. She stared at her friend, eyebrows drawn together, lips pursed, giving her The Stare she usually reserved for uncooperative evidence. 

"Abby, there was no sex!"

The Stare, it seemed, worked amazingly well on human beings, too.

"A... friend just picked me up at the airfield last night." It wasn't a straight out lie, even though it was far from the complete truth. Right now, though, Abby didn't need to know that the friend had been Tony, and that she hadn't known he would be there because Shmeil had told him when she would arrive, and that her heart may have missed a beat or two when she'd seen his face.

She'd said his name, and he'd given her that certain kind of smile in return -- the kind that hid true affection behind a half-joke. He'd never gotten around to cracking that joke, though, because she'd reached out for him before he'd had the chance, and her hands had been unsteady and her stomach in nervous flutters. But he hadn't hesitated and returned the embrace, and then he'd just whispered, "Hi", very softly, mildly surprised, but... happy. This time she'd taken her sweet time cherishing this, because this time she'd had no duties and no sorrow calling her away. His arms had felt good around her, and his cheek had felt good against hers, and there had been no stubble because he'd actually shaved before picking her up. And maybe it had been that tiny thing that tipped the scale. Or maybe it had been his warmth, or the way she'd suddenly found herself almost drowning in his presence and his warm, earthy scent. Whatever the trigger, she'd ended up burying her face into his neck for a moment. She'd felt how his breathing had jumped to a faster pace, and for a split second she'd been afraid this had been the wrong thing to do, but then he'd tightened his arms around her for a heartbeat, and that had been... good.

"This gets easier with practice," she'd said after he'd let go of her reluctantly, still nervous, hands fluttering even worse now, and he'd laughed and taken her bag without asking, and she'd let him. He'd said he was all for practice then, and to her great surprise the warm, happy bubble of contentedness in her stomach didn't dissolve, didn't leave her empty and craving more, like it usually did. Maybe that was why his arm had ended up around her shoulders at one point, and she hadn't wasted a breath to complain. Instead, she'd gone with what her heart wanted and curled into him to soak up more of his strength. And for some reason, he hadn't complained about that either.

"And?"

"And there was no sex," Ziva stated firmly. Which was true, of course, but -- again -- not the whole truth. Somehow, Abby seemed to smell that.

"Buuut...?" she prompted suggestively, and Ziva blinked, mouth open, all out of words while she tried to find a way out of this and failed. 

"There was dinner," she eventually confessed. Abby nodded and kept staring at her, face all eager and aglow now because she smelled romance like a trained dog. And so, faced with her friend's happy, supportive enthusiasm, Ziva caved. "And there was kissing."

Yes, there had been some kisses. Quite a few, actually. They'd happened later that night, when she'd looked at him over the edge of her glass and he hadn't even been aware of it. When she'd thought that he still had her insides fluttering hours later, by his mere presence and his strength. And his hands that she couldn't stop staring at. The hands she'd felt that night, grounding her, pulling her out of the dark place and holding her. Steady hands, stroking her pulse and calming her racing heart. 

And then she'd realized that over the past few days he had done something she hadn't thought possible -- he'd managed to drag her from the lonely, cold, emotionless place she'd always gone to when she had lost someone before. It had been the one thing that had always worked for her: shut down, shut everyone out. Don't feel anything except bloodlust. Because anything else leaves you too vulnerable.

But this time Tony, with his steady persistence like a loyal dog, had almost forced her to feel. Had forced her to face her emotions and live through them. She'd let him. And to her great surprise, she had survived. And it hadn't felt half bad to let him in.

_"And?"_

"And there was some making out, on a bed that was too small..." Ziva drew a deep breath and bit her lip, to swallow the rest of her words and to hide the smile that threatened to creep into her face once more. It felt too inappropriate to show, and she wasn't ready yet to share this memory, of how he'd touched her, carefully, as if she might break. How he'd looked at her as if she were the most wondrous thing he'd ever seen. How he'd whispered things into her ear that weren't meant to be understood, but felt. How she'd felt them, and how her heart had almost burst because she couldn't take much more.

She wondered if she'd already said too much when Abby's eyes suddenly widened and her mouth fell open. "Does Tony know you're in love?" she blurted out, and Ziva flinched despite the lowered voice and conspiratorial tone. "I mean, yay, obviously! But you know him, he can be kind of a dick about these things, and-"

"He knows," Ziva interrupted her friend. And yet again, she had to hide an involuntary smile that Abby should phrase it that way. She hadn't thought about it in these terms before, but she found that she didn't mind. It seemed... accurate. "And he's okay with it."

"Really? I thought he-"

It figured that Abby's curiosity would be rudely interrupted by the very object of their discussion, sauntering into the lab with a wide grin and a flippant greeting on his lips. For a heartbeat Ziva sighed in relief because now they could surely put the topic to rest for a while and she would have a bit more time to get her story straight.

That was, of course, until Abby turned around, shot one glance at Tony and his glowing, smiling face, and said, "Oh my god...!"


End file.
